Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ultrasonic image diagnostic device, an ultrasonic image processing method, and an ultrasonic image processing program.
Description of the Related Art
In ultrasonic diagnosis, when applying an ultrasonic probe on a body surface of a subject to capture an in-vivo ultrasonic image, there is a case of making a puncture for removing body fluid accumulated in an in-vivo imaging area or injecting medical solution to the area. At that time, a positional relationship between a puncture needle and an organ in the body is confirmed by using the ultrasonic image displayed on a screen.
Conventionally, it is suggested to process the ultrasonic image such that the puncture needle in the display image becomes clear. For example, the conventional ultrasonic diagnostic device disclosed in JP 2001-269339 A generates a variation image between two B-mode ultrasonic tomographic image frame data adjacent to each other in a time direction in a B-mode ultrasonic tomographic image frame data group accumulated in the device and adds the variation image data to currently obtained ultrasonic tomographic image frame data, thereby displaying a B-mode ultrasonic image in which visibility of the puncture needle is improved.
Meanwhile, in the ultrasonic image, an object which moves in the body such as not only the puncture needle but also the heart often becomes the subject. In a case in which an object which does not move itself in the body is an object to be observed also, a position of the objet to be observed might relatively move by scanning by a probe. Therefore, the ultrasonic image in which positional change of the object to be observed in the generated image may be easily specified is required.
A frame rate of the ultrasonic images might vary by a factor such as device operation setting; when the frame rate varies, a time interval between the two adjacent B-mode ultrasonic image frame data used for generating the variation image in the above-described conventional technology also varies. A moving distance differs between a case in which the time interval between the frame data is short and a case in which this is long even when a moving speed of a moving body is the same, so that a comparison result represented by a comparison image, that is to say, variation differs. Suppose that the variation is represented by difference, for example, and the difference is reflected in highlighting of the moving body on the display image, for example, a highlighting degree of the moving body on the display image changes according to a degree of difference. In other words, even when the moving body actually moves in the same manner, the highlighting degree changes depending on the factor such as the device operation setting. Therefore, there is certain limitation in improvement of reliability of motion evaluation of the moving body in the ultrasonic image.